GUY GONE WILD

By Gregor Collins

Actor-Writer-Producer

IF YOU HAPPENED TO HAVE BEEN worried about my well being seven years, four months and 3 days ago, there would have been no need for concern – I was in Phoenix, Arizona, sitting on a small table in the corner of the ‘Playboy Suite’ in the back of our million dollar tour bus, wearing a weathered grey t-shirt and jeans, an old Orioles baseball cap, drinking a bottle of Heineken, and watching three perfect beautiful blonde naked college girls making out with each other as if their lives depended on it.

And I was being paid for it.

My boss was in the air by now on his private jet, eager to see how I was struggling through my first day as Supervisor for this Spring’s Girls Gone Wild tour.

Sorry, Mom – I guess the cat’s out of the bag now.

So the blondes were playing tonsil hockey. “It’s our first time doing this, just so you know,” they reassured me as they continued to caress one another’s flawless figures. That’s what they all said. Then they suddenly stopped, looked at each other and giggled, and turned to me and asked if what they were doing was what I needed. I shared a knowing look with the camera guy, and said, “That was great, really, but I honestly think you could do better.” Up for the challenge, they were poised to prove to me that they could do better. The only thing I was missing was a chair that said Porn Director, a cigar, and a moustache.

And, it could be argued, my dignity.

Before they proceeded to molest each other, one of them asked in a fleeting moment of seriousness… “You’ll give us the t-shirt you promised, right?” I revealed the cute little pink and black tank top, that may as well have doubled for diamond rings to college girls across the country, and to that, the three looked at each other and celebrated, as if they’d gotten the better end of the deal. Then they jumped into action. After getting into position, they looked over at me as if they were proud daughters displaying a new soccer move to their father. It took me a few seconds to process it, and then I said matter-of-factly, “Works for me,” and I sat back against the side of the bus and sipped my beer, wondering when someone was going tap me on the shoulder and tell me I had to go home.

I wish I was exaggerating. Those blondes? They came running to us, not the other way around. You wouldn’t believe how easy – and legal – it was. Gentlemen, whatever you imagine Heaven on earth being, trust me when I tell you, it’s a Girls Gone Wild Tour. We were Rock Stars plain and simple, and all we had was a bus, a boatload of DVDs, and some Girls Gone Wild tank tops. We didn’t even need guitars. In every way it began as the quintessential dream job for a guy, and there were no indications it would be anything but the greatest month of my life.

But that’s the thing about life… it never turns out the way you expect, especially when it involves women who will throw themselves at you for a $10 t-shirt.

It was the tail end of my reality television producing career. I had just finished a gig at E! Entertainment, producing the red carpet segments for the Oscars and the Golden Globes. I got a call from a friend who said he had a friend who was office-managing the next Girls Gone Wild Tour. He’d already put in a good word that I was a ‘responsible’ producer that could hold together an ‘irresponsible’ production. So I was called in to interview with a kid touted as the next Hugh Hefner.

Tucked away in the hills of Bel Air next to Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones, I walked through his living room and imagined a 747 fitting inside it. Comfortably. We sat down in a back room. An attractive yet uber-hyper 30 year-old guy, Joe Francis’ wheels were like a formula one racecar. He was some sort of a mad marketing genius. I had trouble keeping up with his manic behavior, but deep down in the headquarters of my logic, I knew I’d get the job. After all, if I was hired, I’d be the only one in the company who had any legitimate production experience.

He spoke a mile a minute…

“Get me the footage, that’s all I ask, and hey, if you get it by 9:00, congratulations, I don’t give a shit what you do after that. Just get the footage every night, okay? Good. Do you like chicks? Good. Do you like getting laid? Good…”

I sat there and nodded like the professional producer I was, but in the back of my mind I was high-fiving every guy I’d met in my entire life. I was to be the boss of our “32 cities in 32 days” tour across country; I’d get the playboy suite in the back of the bus, and would be supervising 9 camera guys who were forced to sleep in the cramped bunks in the front; I’d be making $1500 a week, as well as daily per diem, I’d have all my meals paid for, and I wouldn’t have to come out of pocket for two months. There was no one above me, no one who could tell me what to do, except my boss sitting in front of me, and one of his top priorities was to get me laid.

Somebody pinch me, right?

The tour bus left Santa Monica at the end of January, 2004, and the plan was to end up in Panama City Beach, Florida in early March, for Spring Break. There, we were set to meet Snoop Dogg and his posse, who were going to hang with us and shoot a video, whatever that entailed. Then I’d be relieved of my duties.

The events that occurred between January and March are worthy of an epic movie, a movie I’ll be writing this summer, in which, if the planets are aligned just right, I’ll play the lead, and if they’re aligned even righter, it will be a Cameron Crowe film, with the working title, Almost Famous 2.

If I continue with more details about the tour I’d have to hire a lawyer. Seriously. Put it this way – I know a few things, and by few I mean a whole lotta crap that would not only embarrass a few high-profile celebrities, it would land some people in jail. I will say this – everything I supervised, at least the filming of the girls, was inside the parameters of the law. It was my job to do it legally, and I did what I was hired to do. The rest was out of my control.

The day before I left the tour – literally, 12 hours before I was set free from that month of what turned out to be hell on earth – four camera guys, along with Joe (who as always could care less), were arrested for filming an underage girl.

As I watched it all unfold on the news the next day in the comfort of my own bed that I had missed more than you could ever imagine, I didn’t bother thanking God for my good fortune… I figured he’d already turned his back on me the day I took the job.

A couple months later, when the dust had settled and Joe had spent a few days in prison, the office manager asked me to supervise the next tour. He'll never know the indelible images that bounced around in my head before I could answer. I didn't have to. He got the picture. Besides, I’d booked a job as a producer for Celebrity Mole, and was headed down to Mexico, to put my Spanish to good use. So at least I had an excuse.

A week into the Yucatan gig, as I was running around Cancun gathering random items such as a rock sculpture in the shape of a certain male body part (Dennis Rodman was a contestant, no further explanation needed)… my cell phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID, and felt a pit forming in my stomach.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Collins, please.”

“Speaking.”

“This is ____ of the law firm, _____. I have a few questions to ask you about the Girls Gone Wild tour.”

FUCK.